Slugs with Chainsaws?

Bee's Lemon Kniphofia

After many years of gardening and searching, having seen one in a book, we have got hold of a nice example of a 'red hot poker' (Kniphofia) but in the less common colour of pale lemon. We have been searching for the variety 'Bee's Sunset' for ages; well this one is Bee's Lemon so it will do for now. It stands proud in a half barrel full of a goodly mixture of our good loam and some muck from the mini-horses and after spending the summer as a tuft of leaves, has now produced an excellent stand of flower spikes. So far so good!

Slug damage to a Kniphofia stem.

Maddeningly though, the early spikes were being knocked over by something and being full of sap and brittle, they appeared to be almost snapped off. I suspected clumsy chickens but then noticed that at the 'break' there was not an actual break in the stem, but a 'cave' dug out, starting as a small pit in the skin of the stalk but then being hollowed out till there was just the skin at the 'back' of the stalk. The skin on its own was not enough to support the heavy flower head, so my 'vandal' was felling them. Pale brown slugs were quickly found to be the culprit. They were felling a stem and then getting bored (or full up?) and leaving them. They were proceeding through my stand of 'pokers' like a logging gang with chainsaws, felling a stand of forest. We are trying to be a bit organic and wildlife-friendly here, so I could not reach for the slug pellets; I am reduced to sneaking out at night with my head-light on, picking the little devils off and either flinging them as far away as possible or stomping on them on the gravel yard. This battle seems to be working reasonably well and I have, at time of writing, almost a dozen flower stems now starting to open.

These flies are everywhere, confusing me by looking very
like our bees. You are OK once you get your eye in; the
flight and eyes are wrong and only one pair of wings.

On the tenth of this month, the pigs reach 5 months age, so needed measuring again for the 'bust squared' weight estimates. They have now reached 66-70 kg so they are fast approaching 'ready' We are going for pork weight (carcass at 55 kg-ish) rather than baconers (80 kg) so it is looking like our 'bible' (Liz Shankland's (Haynes) Pig Manual) could be spot on with her 6 months estimate. Liz is already eye-ing them up in terms of joints of meat and recipes; she has an evil glint in her eye as she compliments their 'magnificence'. I need to get organised on creating the 'race' up from their field gate to a place I can get to with the trailer so that we can get them used to exploring, finding the trailer and enjoying the treats and straw there-in. That way the final journey will not be too traumatic of difficult for either us, or the pigs. We are not looking forward to that day, but it comes with the territory.

A possible white cornflower from an 'insect friendly' seed mix.

We had a nice treat today. John Deere Bob needed driving to nearby town Ballyhaunis to collect some money from the meat factory where he had sent 5 bullocks. He wanted to thank us for our help and invited the two of us to join him for lunch in a pub in the town. You never know exactly how much money you will get for cattle, he tells us, as it depends on a variable pence per kg figure and on the final, cleaned carcass weights of your beasts, but he was very happy today and proudly showed us the paperwork. He is not 'rich' for long, though, he joked; on Thursday he has to go to Castlerea mart to shell out for ten replacement 'weanlings' he has bought.

Californian poppy (Eschscholzia)

The pub was excellent. Called 'Val's Bar and Deli' it is a lovely pub with excellent service and delicious food. We three all had the fish but with differing choices of veg and salad. The lady saw that we looked like a hungry crowd and threw in a great bowl of chips for us. For me, too, a rare chance to get some Guinness down me with Liz offering to drive home. I love the 'black stuff' but amazingly I have now lived in Ireland for over 2 years and have probably drunk fewer than a dozen pints in that time. It is a pub drink (the cans or bottles are just not the same) and we are rarely in pubs as one of us would have to drive home. It is lucky, I guess, we did not buy a house within walking distance of a Guinness pub!

Finally a picture of Pirate enjoying a bit of sunshine in the yard - we are enjoying a week of 'Indian Summer' which is much appreciated after our rather wet chilly July and August.

The Loneliness Of......

Friends will know that neither Liz nor I have a whole lot to do with jogging, running, athletics or other sporty pursuits but today we managed to get involved a bit in a Half Marathon. We had no idea such an event was to puff, sore-legged and aching of lungs, past our front gate, till a red car pulled up and a lady hopped out to drop a letter into our post box (and set off the dogs a-barking). This note told us that the 'Ros go Run' Half Marathon and 10 km were happening today (Sunday) and subtly asked that we, the locals "ensure our pets are safe and secure during the run" which we took to mean "please don't let your doggies chase our runners!"

The note's writer also thought we might like to join 'Ros go Run' on the day as a participant (unlikely!), by cheering on the runners or by 'leaving out bottles of water'.  Naturally they had a Facebook presence and there was also a website where we could see the route and found that it passed us at nearly the 12 mile mark, almost home, and was going eastbound, so would crest the hill at Una's, just up the road, and then relax (comparatively) with the long down-slope to 'Shannon's Cross' junction. We decided we could have some fun setting up an impromptu water-station with a sign 20 yards out, our table full of cups of water, and then our wheelie bin for the spent cups a few yards further on.

I had a go at recreating the font of the logo and added 'Downhill from here'; green fence paint and red gloss on an old (unbleached organic cotton, no less!) duvet cover. We woke up and got organised on the day so that we could do all the morning jobs, walk the dogs and be through lunchtime sandwiches by the time the first runners, on their 11:30 am start were likely to pass (about 1 pm, in fact). We had lots of marshals and organisers 'bibbing' us up and throwing thumbs-up signs as they drove by and the Parish Priest even stopped to chat and to thank us for "such encouragement". Most of the 60 or so runners accepted a drink, some just up-ending the cup over their over-heated heads and many exchanged banter and joked with us as they jogged by. By the 12th mile they were well spread out so that we only had one or two in view at any one time and I could not take my hoped for 'knot of runners' picture. The loneliness of the long distance runner? Fair play to them; by the time they reached us they'd run about 11 miles more than I could manage, and were raising money for MS Ireland, the Éire Óg GAA Club and Lisacul Community Development ltd. We could hear the cheers and tannoy noise going on at the GAA Club just down the road as the runners started to pull in, their Half Marathons completed. Eventually, about 2 pm, the course closing car came through to tell us we had 'had them all now'.

At last, colour break on the beef toms

We enjoyed the event and we assume our little bit of volunteering was appreciated by the club and the locals; it certainly was by the thirsty runners. This was the first such run organised by the Ros go Run team and is described as 'inaugural' on the website. They were pleased with their 60 entry as the event clashed with a bigger run in Westport which was thought to have maybe drawn 'the Mayo lot' away, and today was also a huge day for the GAA sport 'hurling', with the All Ireland Senior Final happening in Dublin. Just in case they come this way again next year, we will keep the sign.

7.2 kg of blackberries in about an hour and a half.

In other news, John Deere Bob invited us down to pick the blackberries in his home fields. It's a job we both like and it was a lovely warm afternoon, so we wandered down and picked 7.196 kg between us in a leisurely hour and a half. In some places the berries were so close packed on the ends of branches that it looked like there was a 'super-berry' made up of a dozen or so berries and in others individual fruits were better separated but very big, approaching the size of the top of your thumb. Thanks you very much, Bob.

Onions tied into ropes in the car port

Pirate the Cat is settling well now in his 'compromise' accommodation, our Utility Room. Although not part of the indoors, it is an indoor style room with dry-lined and plastered walls, lighting and a central heating radiator. It is also warmed by the 'exhaust' from the three freezers one of which, at least, will be extracting the heat from all those blackberries. We have pegged the cat flap half-open and he is happy nipping in and out through that. He does not like the cat flap to be closed as he bonks his nose on it, failing to see the transparent flap.

One of our apples and a slice of Liz's apple cake.

Now that we know him better, we are sure he has only around 25% of normal sight and walks into things which he does not know or realise are there. He will come in through the front door and then try to walk out through it even though it has been closed - it is dark red so we think he assumes the opening is still there for him. If I move the bits of sheep wire around to manage sheep movements, he will walk into any new barriers I create - sheep wire is fairly thick gauge but a 4-6 inch square mesh so I guess does not cast much of a profile on clouded cat-eye retinas. However, the Utility Room will stay unchanged for the foreseeable future, so he will get to know where his bed and food bowl are and the access 'hole' so he will be safe and sound, as well as warm and dry.

101 uses for an old barn roof. Shoring up the pig defences.

Finally, those who predicted I might need electric fence for the pigs might have a smile at this paragraph. Although the sheep wire with its ground level strand of barbed, has worked everywhere else, down in the ditch/wallow I have not been so sure of it. The ditch started as a nice 'V' shaped 4 feet deep cut, about 6 feet wide with the East Field fence a good 2 feet from the edge of the ditch. But the piggies have enjoyed the wallow and have expanded the width of it by rootling into (and undercutting) the banks, so that it is more like an 8 feet wide 'U' shape, with the edge now creeping up on the bottom of the fence. I am in the UK soon for a short while and I did not want the pigs to decide to break out while Liz was in charge, so I have shored up the bank with some of the curved corrugated sheets which came off the hay barn (see, sometimes we 'hoarders of junk who keep old scrap because it might come in useful some day' get it right!)  so that the pigs cannot rootle any further into my banks and pop up, butter-wouldn't-melt, among the sheep!

Not the Best Orchard Year Ever, Then...

A "Katy" apple - just the one!

22 Trees and nowhere near that many apples, pears, plums and what-not. 2014 has not been a good year at all for our top fruit or stone fruit. We are not unduly concerned about this -there are very young trees in a very new orchard and fruit trees are definitely in the 'long term' category of projects. We had a brilliant year for blossom and I published plenty of very pretty pictures on this blog in the Spring. We then even seemed to set a lot of fruit - prior to the 'June Drop' I could have taken pictures of flower trusses resplendent with tiny potential pears and cherries.

"Golden Hornet" crabs - around a dozen.

Then came the June drop and the heatwave of June followed by some wicked chilly winds through July and the rain in that month and through to August. Each evening, as I exercised the dogs off the leads in the orchard field (dog proof; no vanishing acts!) I could see fewer and fewer fruits - all the cherries and pears seemed to wither 'on the vine' and fall away so that only a few trees have ended up with any fruit at all, and most have just the one or two if they have any. I had great hopes for a single 'Czar' plum turning a nice deep purple but then one day that had gone, stolen by a magpie, maybe.

Buff Orpington chicks at four and a half weeks

So, now it is September and I can probably give you a 'final score' without counting too many chickens. We have 9 apple trees, on which I have one 'Katy' fruit, one 'Red Windsor', 2 'Bramleys' and a 'James Grieves'. I have no fruit on the 'Egremont Russet', none on either 'Braeburn' or the 'Irish Peach'. I have a dozen or so crab apples on a 'Golden Hornet'. I do not have a single cherry despite having 3 trees. From 3 plum/gage trees I had two 'Victoria' plums. I brought those in to Liz, handing her the clean one. I went to cut away the 'wasp damage' at the stalk end of my 50% of the crop and an earwig reversed out of the hole. "Could have been worse;" said Liz, "It might have been half an earwig!"

Goldie's 3 remaining sons. 2 more sold yesterday.

The damson did not even blossom and the mulberry is way too young yet - they grow very slowly and can make very old trees. The quince set 3 fruits but these stalled during the cold winds of July and have not put on any size. A while back I published a picture of an inch long quince. I could take almost the same shot 2 months later. They will presumably just fade and drop off, inch and a half long undeveloped babies. The hazel-nut tree got decapitated by geese within minutes of planting and is now recovering, and the 2 pear trees (a 'Williams' and a 'Conference') I have already described as fruitless.

2 happy pigs snuffle for blackberries dropped among the grass

This little lot is not meant to be a 'moan', just a statement for the record. When someone writes the annals of fruit growing here, 2014 will not be among the good years, but 2015 is yet to come and we hope there will be many more years for these trees.

White cat Pirate camps out on the front doormat
hoping to gain access to the house.

Meanwhile, out in the 'wild' the fruit is looking much more promising, the hedges are laden with a fast-ripening heavy crop of blackberries. We need to get out there with our buckets soon but for now I have been grabbing a few in a small bag from the lanes while walking the dogs and bringing them home to spice up the pigs' lunchtime snack. We are also enjoying a good crop of Autumn fruiting raspberries. And finally, I have some colour break in tomatoes in the poly-tunnel. I feel like I am weeks behind anyone else I talk to.

The kitchen garden has done excellently for salads
and is now starting red beetroot.

I have a huge and heavy crop of plum tomatoes and big beef tomatoes but all of them were hanging onto their chlorophyll and looking like they'd be green tomato chutney at best and a failure at worst. But no, I now have orange and red colours coming on the plum tomato plant at one end of the house and a slight fade towards yellow-green on the beef-tom fruits on other plants. We may yet get some crop and even a glut which I am sure the piggies will enjoy if we cannot cope with it. We currently have a glut of yellow courgettes but the pigs turn their noses up at those. There's no pleasing some folks.

The Ramones on the front lawn.

In other news, Pirate the Cat's adoption of us and our house has moved on a stage; the lad is now staking out the place camped out on the front door mat and trying to nip inside every time we open the front door. He seems oblivious of the bad intentions of the three Westies all being held back on leads whimpering their lust for his blood and intent on his destruction. We are having some fun trying to manage this conflict and coming up with ways where we might be able to let him be the indoor cat he so badly wants to be.

Ginger pigs gleaming in the sunshine.

Liz started to let him come in for a wander while I was 'orcharding' the dogs or walking them down the lane and he likes to wander about but then settle in one of the easy chairs (mine mainly!). He was also allowed a couple of nights over-night in the Living room but we have to lock him in there safe away from the dogs, so he thanked us with a poo on the leather sofa. That was a short lived experiment. He may not even be house trained (why would he be?) but being locked indoors did not help. So now he's allowed in while I'm out with dogs and we are moving his food and bed to the Utility Room; although not really part of the 'indoor' house, it is indoors and has a radiator and a cat-flap. So far so good except that it is still warm, so we leave a window open for Blue (our other cat) and last night Pirate discovered this and was then discovered by Deefer-dog in the wee small hours asleep, once more on my chair. That was a bit exciting for a while, but nobody got injured. It's never boring here, even if it is a bit short on apples and pears.

Bull Wire

Bull wire.

We were right to hang onto those worries that the new post and rail fence might not be 100% sheep-proof and a couple of days back I ventured out on some garden errand and spotted that there were only 3 sheep on the lawn. The fourth, one of the rams, was grazing contentedly over by the pond. No damage done; he was quickly rounded up and moved, with his three oppo's, back to the East Field while we investigated the leak. We quickly found hoof prints in some newly dug (daffodil planting) soil - he had shimmied under the bottom rail where a dip in the soil gave him 12 inches or so of space. The solution this time is a single strand of 'bull wire' (it's like smooth trellis wire but thick enough to stop a bull (allegedly)) run along 6 inches from the ground, effectively splitting the bottom gap in half. I had a bit left over from the last job, so I have put that across the bottom two gaps - the taller ones. That seems to have stopped the lamb's gallop and the other three have not tried at all, so possibly I won't need to bull wire the whole 54 metre run.

Beech nuts - 2014 is a good year.

Meanwhile, now that we are through the recent list of inbound visits, we are slotting into a nice routine, especially with those sheep. Each morning they get a small breakfast of lamb 'crunch' (it's like meusli for sheep; all manner of grains, molasses-dipped meal etc) but then some more when I lead them round the corner from East Field to the lawn 'entrance' gate. They spend the day grazing the lawn and Primrose Path, browsing the hedges and pulling young ivy from the huge black-spruce trees. Then around 5 pm I rattle another feed bucket (a small amount more 'crunch') and they come sprinting across to be led back to their East Field for over night.

The very last joint of 2013 lamb - this half leg of Dora.

In previous years we have used the 'crunch' hard - 1 kg per lamb per day, to try to get good weight on but we are going easy this year. We are happy with the weight gain on honest Roscommon grass and last year's lambs were, if anything, too heavy at slaughter. I will use the crunch this year just for the training, leading them around and so that I get a good look at them a couple of times each day. When a sheep comes sprinting up from the bottom of your East Field to your whistle you can be pretty sure there is not a lot wrong with him!

The same, roasted.

By coincidence, we have just used up from the freezer, the last of our lamb joints from 2013, a half leg of the lady we called Dora. The meat has been pure delight. We can't claim organic, or even GM-free because of the crunch, but we can answer for the welfare, love and respect, the complete lack of unnecessary medication once they were here and for the respectful and professionally done 'end' in our local small butchers, Ignatius G in Castlerea. This joint did the original roast on day 1, has done lamb sandwiches for a couple of days for my lunch and my bagel this morning, and has reappeared in a risotto tonight; there is till some left. The dogs enjoyed the bones, too, especially Towser whose turn it was to get the pelvis today.

Two ladies of a certain age? Min and Squawk

The birds are mainly through their moult and have come back into lay. We are amused by the fact that the widow, Min (The Hin) our Guinea fowl has paired off with our elderly one remaining Cuckoo Marans hen, 7-8 years old and still laying regularly. This may be because they were both 'bereft' at similar times and are of similar dark colouring, but we see the two of them patrolling about, chattering to each other. The Marans is a genuine 'lady of a certain age', the Guinea fowl just looks like one with her stooped gait and lowered head position.

Opening the MAQS dose outdoors!

You'll know from previous posts that we have the expected varroa-mite problem in the hive and needed to apply the 'MAQS' formic acid treatment strips to fume the hive for 7 days. We remember from our pre-hive training days, when one of the group asked a visiting speaker whether MAQS 'seemed toxic enough' and he replied "Sure, there's a hell of a bang off it!" We now know exactly what he meant. The formic acid gel-strips come in sealed sachets in a sealed 'bucket' and the instructions say open it outside. They are so lively they stink from several feet away and the formic acid grabs you by the back of the throat.

MAQS strips in place on the queen excluder.

You have to be careful of temperature; you can use the strips when daytime temperatures are between 10 and 29 degrees, but towards the top end you have to create more ventilation or the intense fumes can kill older workers and stop the queen laying. It was about 15 degrees the day we did it, so hopefully we won't have that problem, but the strips are in the hive now slowly doing their stuff, fuming away for 7 days killing mites. The gang will be able to go into the Autumn ivy foraging and Winter, stronger, freed of their parasitic load and will, we hope, survive the winter all the better for that. We take the strips out next Monday when they are spent and we do the mite count thing again in Spring, re-dosing if required.

Rolo RIP (03-06-2012 to 02-09-2014)

Sadly, we have a tragedy to report today as one of our lovely cats, Rolo, was killed by a car last night. Mercifully this was instant. The dogs detected the poor little mite lying in the roadside ditch when we were out for our walk; I would never have seen him but for their noses. He's now buried in one of the flower beds, the site marked by a Geranium donated to us by Steak Lady when we were up at a family gathering over the weekend. RIP, old fella. We will miss you - you were a lovely boy as well as a demon mouser and ratter. Your brother Blue will miss you too, and definitely our pup, Poppy, with whom you were best friends. A short but happy and healthy life.

An Innocent Abroad?

Sugar bowl and milk jug set.

Well, Liz's Birthday is now done and dusted and has been pronounced a success even though this weekend in Ireland is NOT a Bank Holiday, so that she does not get the '3 day break' around the big day as she did in UK. We managed to stretch it out to 2 days by having the special meal (we each cook that day for the other, the meal of their choice) on the 2nd day. Now that the presents are opened and revealed, I can shamefully admit to a serious outbreak of being a numpty, blundering around in the internet like an innocent abroad, like a country bumpkin in the big city!

A bit of fun - these napkins.

I will happily admit to being just no good at that sort of thing and would normally have Liz do it, like I plead with her to do all the actual ordering and talking to the waiter when we are in France. These though, were gifts to her, so I was on my own. I was grand as long as I was in familiar territory; I started off with a few bits (music, books) from Amazon, paying in Euros and knowing that the stuff was coming from within the EEC. It was after that it all started to fall apart - we 'needed' a certain body lotion from Van Cleef and Arpels ("First") and we'd failed to get it in town; the lady had advised that Galway City might have it. Pah! (says I) The internet surely, what could possibly go wrong?

That is how I ended up with our friendly postman, Ger' , strolling up our drive and demanding €17.69 in unpaid import duty one day and another €17 a few days later. I had managed to knowingly buy the body lotion from Florida (!) and some 'stocking fillers' with knitting pics on, un-knowingly also from the USA. I had no idea these costs would occur - I thought I'd paid my whack including the rather punitive shipping costs. Lesson learned, I guess - either don't let me loose on the internet with a debit card, or at least make sure I keep to the EEC. To add insult to shameful injury, the top had also come off the lotion in transit and some of the gloop had leaked out into the manufacturers posh packaging, but Liz has most of it and thinks she can rescue the situation.

On a happier note, one of the boxes which I thought might be a Liz present, turned out to be our 'MAQS' anti-varroa mite hive medication, so we can use that on Monday AND a gift from Mazy which we thought had gone astray, turned out to have been left for us by the courier in one of the pharmacist shops in Balla-D. We assume the courier was going there for his next drop and had failed to find us.

River Trout in creamy sauce with lemon and cucumber

For the Birthday meal itself we went with a salmon recipe out of our much-loved Irish Cookery book by Theodora Fitzgibbon. We had been given two big superb mountainy river trout by Anne and Simon along with three plump cucumbers in part payment for our pig-wrangling. We do not know a lot about Theodora F but she is a well known food writer and, from this book, more a collector of recipes, than a chef per se, and given to name-dropping her contributors. The book is nothing like a modern 'celebrity chef' book; there are no glossy colour pics, no shots of lady chef looking alluring as she licks chocolate sauce off her fingers, and no snappy "Naked Chef" style title. It is a soft back with a 3-colour cover and the pictures within are old monochrome period scenes of Ireland; St Stephen's Green in 1860, Cork Market c 1900 and so on. But the recipes we have tried out of it have always been excellent and this salmon recipe (used on one of these big trout) was a triumph which will go into our own 'repertoire' collection, simple but delicious. The trout's body cavity was filled with parsley, the outside rubbed with butter and cream poured over. It was baked for 10 minutes per pound, then diced cucumber flesh (minus seeds and skin) and lemon juice were added. It was well basted and returned, lidless, to the oven for another 15 minutes. Liz was worried that the lemon juice would curdle the cream, but no, it created a lovely, tangy, lemony sauce which was pure delight to mop up with the steamed, floury potatoes and the ruby chard. Excellent.

The Ramones on the front lawn

Meanwhile, we now have the lambs fully bucket-trained so that we can get them into the routine of being led out of the East Field onto the front lawn in the morning and then home again in the evening. We are keeping them in the wire-fenced field overnight and while we're not around for now; we are still not 100% sure they couldn't squeeze between the rails of the post and rail if they had a mind to do it. When you sit on the terrace table and watch them through the gaps between the rails, they sometimes seem scarily small and the gaps very wide. We may suffer a confidence failure and add strands of 'bull wire' half way up each gap on their side of the fence. It will not spoil the look of the thing, but might make us feel more secure.

The lambs are enjoying the new space - there will be grass there untouched by sheepy mouths for almost 2 years and there is good browse to be had from the big trees (ivy) and the hedge and bank. They also seem to enjoy gazing at the rabbits  in their runs and to wander into the currently disused keet run for a lie down when their bellies are full. They also come and look curiously at any human activity near their fence, such as when I was planting a load of daffodil bulbs this morning. They are lovely gentle things and I find them charming.

All Go

Nearly complete - the new post and rail fence.

It seems to have been all go here since the arrival of the Silverwoods (see previous posts). Expecting their arrival we had postponed the task by fencing contractor, Paul (the thought of children mixing it with barbed wire  and Paul's 50 kg pile driver...) but once they had gone, Paul was anxious to get back stuck in. We had 2 nice long days at it, working on till 8 pm or so finishing with all the little titivating and tweaking that Paul, who is a perfectionist likes to do before he signs off. We had been joking about the fact that one of the posts nearest the road had his name written on it in green marker pen, where the batch of wood had been identified for 'shipping', but we both know that people will see the nice new fence (and, we hope, admire it) and then want to know who did it. We will happily tell them Paul's name and he will be happy for the advertisement and word-of-mouth recommendation.

New sheep-wire run along the lane-hedge.

On the final day he was collected from work by his wife and 4 children whom we had happily agreed to show round the place, so we were back in 'petting zoo' mode. They all seem to love the pigs and sheep and the little ones loved a chance to hold a Buff Orpington chick; although the oldest boy went all 'teenager' at that point and decided it was not cool. Paul's wife runs some kind of play group and she left wondering to herself (out loud) whether the play group might enjoy a visit. We are going to have to watch it - we already have Guide Leader Mrs Silverwood measuring up the new sheep field to see how many tents she can squeeze in!

Brawn under construction.

It only remains now to carry on the bucket-training the sheep; teaching them to follow the sound of a rattled feed-bucket, so that we can reliably walk them from the East Field round to the front lawn without anyone making a break for freedom. Longer term readers will recall that our first batch of sheep, which were Jacobs cross ewes in 2012 spent most of their time out on this lawn with me shepherding them around to stop them diving through hedges or down across the 'allotment', but they all have to be bucket trained first - it is a lot easier to attract them back by 'carrot method' than to chase them from behind and use the 'stick'.

Mango chutney - the muslin bag holds
the smaller, woodier spices.

As soon as this job was done, Liz wanted to make brawn from a pig's head donated to us by Anne (Thanks Anne) and also mango chutney, but we have no saucepan big enough to take a whole head from these monsters. We needed to split the head. This is always a rather violent and brutal task and seems a long way from the precision cuts and nifty knife work of proper butchery. My way is to hack-saw through some of the skull from the back, till I have made a crack big enough to take the sharp edge of my one-sided bill hook. I can then use the 7 lb 'lump' hammer to whack the bill hook blade through the rest of the way. It's not pretty. Liz still has to dislocate the long, lower jaw halves before it will fit in the pots.

The chicks at 3 weeks are now outdoor birds. 

We hope that when we take our own pigs to slaughter, if we intend to keep the heads and make brawn, we will be able to persuade the butcher to split the skulls for us; he's doing our butchery. Anne and Simon chose to do the cutting up themselves. I do not have the equipment or the skills, so I am going to hand over the money to the experts; the slaughterman / butcher will be doing ours.

Going through the hive debris looking for varroa mites

Meanwhile, it has come round to the time when all good bee keepers must check their hives for varroa mite. Many people know the name, and associate the words with all that is bad and disastrous about hive failures and 'colony collapse disorder (CCD)'. Varroa mite is now endemic in the British Isles and modern bee keepers pretty much have to accept that their bees will have varroa, the same way their cat or dog will probably get fleas, they just need to monitor the mite population and use one of the modern fume treatments twice a year to knock them down if they get too numerous.

Dead varroa mite. 

The treatment our group prefer is a new Canadian preparation called 'MAQS' (everyone pronounces it 'Max') which consists of strips which you lay in the hive across the frames, which fume formic acid throughout the colony. The treatment is temperature sensitive - it needs to be above 10 degrees to 'fume' properly. The bees hate it at first but soon get used to it - (formic acid is actually one of the components of bee sting), but it seeps into all the air-spaces and down through the wax cappings on the brood cells, killing the mites and mite larvae as they grow on the bee larvae. It presumably also seeps into any honey or pollen stores, but it is said not to taint the honey. You leave the strips in place for 7 days to do their work, then discard them.

A red spider mite (yellow ring) photo-bombs a group of
 much less mobile varroa mites. 

The way you know if you need to treat has been our task over the weekend. In the floor box of the hive there is a permanently fixed mesh floor (mouse and wasp proof but good ventilation) but below that 2 rails which will support a slide-in stiff plastic sheet, on which you can place a large sheet of paper. You leave that in place for several days, and then on a calm day, bring it to somewhere well lit where you can examine the debris which has fallen through the mesh floor onto it - dead tiny insects, bits of wax capping dropped by hatching bees, bee poo etc. In our case we also had some whizzy red spider mites who are presumably eating the other debris and over a hundred of our target species, the varroa mite.

Lovely card from Diamond

These guys are shiny dark or light brown, about 1.6 mm wide, and wider than they are long (like a crab). You then divide the total count by the days and if your 'mite-drop' per day is more than a guide figure for that month (33 for August) then you have a problem and you need to treat. Ours is, so we will be putting our MAQS strips in at the next visit.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note a nice Birthday Card for Liz from Diamond - this one all black with a nice London design laser-cut out of the front. Nice one Roger la Borde designs. Happy Birthday to Lizzie for tomorrow. May you have many many more. Oh, and we had another 'petting zoo' visit from Sparks and his son B(7) who also brought along a school chum named Charlie. Sparks and B loved it - Charlie turned out to be one of those kids who is scared of everything animal like - especially dogs, cats, pigs, chickens and geese. We had a bit of a thin time with the poor dogs locked up in the living room and pouring rain all day, but we survived. All part of life's rich tapestry.

As Busy as...

Two teenagers phoning each other across our sofa?

This week we play host to a visit from most of the Silverwoods, plus a 'best friend' subbing in for the missing eldest, Em-J, who is off doing one of those 'holidays NOT with Mum and Dad' at Trabolgan Holiday Village in Cork; a bit like 'Centre Parcs' in the UK. In our group we have Mum and Dad Silverwood, young teenager J-M and her chum Emma, plus the 'smalls', M(8) and R(6).

Low-maintenance guests, pulling a 23 hour 'all-nighter'
in their tent. Midnight feasts etc.

In fact the teens have brought a tent, which goes up on the front lawn as soon as they arrive and into which they vanish delighting in the fact that the 'smalls' are banned from this chunk of territory. We are not sure they will be brave enough to sleep out there all night but they do that and more, well supplied with 'Midnight Feast' fare. They disappear in at about 6 p.m. and do not appear for breakfast or even lunch the next day. We only actually see them at 5 next day when Mum tells them that if they want to be re-stocked with nosh for their 2nd night, they will have to come out and collect it, she is drawing the line at bringing it to the tent flap!. In fact they do, of course, emerge for supper times, Liz's slow cooked pork one day and a (Hubbard) chicken curry the next.

J-M and Emma enjoying their camping (we hope).

Meanwhile, as well as the usual 'petting zoo', feeding the animals and collecting eggs, the smalls were well entertained with various games and madness. The latest must-have toy when you are that age is apparently 'Loom Bands', boxes of 2000+ tiny coloured elastic bands which come with a 24-peg (or so) plastic loom and a crochet hook. You lay out these bands stretched across the loom pegs in various configurations, using the crochet hook  to loop bands back across each other to form a weave from which you can make all manner of small items such as bracelets, gloves, small model poodle dogs and so on.

Mr and Mrs S on the loom bands after the 'smalls' had been
put to bed.

Hours of fun especially for the parents who, in our case had to take over when a small child got bored or stuck, or needed a change of scene like feeding the geese. A nice 'craft' for them to learn but the thought of dropping the tray of 2000 bands and having to pick them up and re-sort into colours.......? Mrs Silverwood tells me she has a 20,000 band box at home to re-supply the trays. I expect that one is kept under lock and key.

Loom band product - green and red for Mayo, blue
and yellow for Roscommon.

Another toy that impressed me was only a cheap thing but performed well and did not seem to be as brittle and quick to break as most of the junk the kids get through; this was the 'Bubble Rocket'. This was a plastic tube 'rocket' which telescoped onto a smaller plastic tube launching stand and was launched by the child jumping on a springy plastic 'bladder' full of air. The pressure of the child jumping on the bladder whooshed the rocket off up to 10-15 feet but, even better, the 'fins' of the rocket were horizontal loops of plastic which sat in soap-bubble mixture poured onto a tray in the launching stand. This way the rocket shot off the stand leaving behind it a trail of soap bubbles and the kids were able to do it over and over again without breaking it. Impressive.

Bee action around the hive entrance.

As I said, we have had before a game of 'tennis' (covered in 'Angry Birds' logos) where the rackets had a brittle plastic sheet across them instead of strings and the first attempt to hit the ball burst the sheet. We have also had a 'baseball bat' made out of spongy plastic and brittle tube, where the first strike at the ball broke the shaft. Frustrating and disappointing for the kids and just clever cynical marketing to the adults - they will never bother to take the goods back and complain because they were only a Euro or so.

We have been surprised this week by a sudden burst of busy activity in the bee hive, possibly as a result of the sun coming out again after a week or more of chilly, miserable breezes. All summer you have been able to go and look at the hive and you'd see plenty of comings and goings, but usually with only a dozen or so bees around the entrance  at once. This week I took a look at around 4 pm two days ago and saw a mini-swarm of over a hundred all coming, going and milling around in the sunshine. I called Liz over to see and then raced to grab the camera, but by the time I got back the sun had gone in and most of the bees had cleared out or gone back in, so my picture is not very impressive. The same buzz happened today. These will not be proper swarms as such - bees do not normally swarm this late in the year and, anyway, swarming behaviour is not like this. We are curious but not worried.

Stash of 15 eggs found in a hedge - someone's been busy.

And finally just a catch-up on our Pig #2 story from last week. This is almost a non-story. I took Mr Silverwood along with me on this morning's early-riser pig-wrangling adventure. We were off to catch Anne and Simon's second pig and haul her to the butcher's lairage and we'd gone mob-handed after last week's fun and games. We needn't have worried. This week's pig was a dream, caught into the trailer inside 23 minutes and delivered to Castlerea inside another 20. Job done. No drama. Mr S and I were back indoors by just gone 9 a.m. drinking coffee and waiting while the rest of the sleepy guests and hostess woke up. Only the teenagers failed to do so, and they got a rude awakening when Mum and Dad let the tent collapse on them. It could have been worse. There were evil plans being hatched to drop a dead pig's head in between the sleeping girls to give them a really traumatic rude awakening they'd never forget. You'll be pleased to know we are not actually THAT mean!.